I think I found Yeats harder to read than Joyce though (quick background, I grew up in southern England with an English mother and Northern Irish father and have never spent any extended time either north or south of the border in Ireland), and that's probably because there are some assumptions in Yeats that the reader has at least some understanding of the myths.ussusimiel wrote:With Joyce this means that all of his work is full of Irish-English that accurately reflects much of the way we still speak today. Joyce is also inclined to include and play on Gaelic words and as Gaelic is still compulsory in school, most Irish people will get at least some of that wordplay. There are also the placenames (which are always important in Ireland), the names of places in Dublin and around the country turn up consistently throughout Finnegan's Wake especially.
With Yeats much the same applies, he invokes placenames regularly and he also uses Celtic myths and stories that again are regularly taught as part of our schooling. It's not necessarily the understanding of these things as the immersion and the feeling of ownership of them that is a part of being Irish. I have no doubt it is the same experience for an English person reading Larkin or Betjeman.
u.
With Joyce there is less of that, but his works are certainly steeped in the culture of the Ireland of his day.
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